21st century racism

On February 10th, the Sacramento Bee published an article about a McClatchy High School student’s controversial science fair project that questioned if certain races were intellectual enough to handle the elite magnet program that the student was currently in, based on their IQ scores.

The project, titled “Race and IQ”, justified the lack of diversity in the schools accelerated Humanitanities and International Studies program because “the average IQ of Blacks, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics are lower than the average IQ’s of non-Hispanic Whites and Northeast Asians.”

Many Students in Sacramento Charter High School’s 12th grade Advanced Placement Literature class, a school with a predominantly Black and Hispanic population, were outraged after reading and discussing the article during class, but few were surprised.

“Not to be blasé about the whole situation but when you’re Black in America, you hear about racist [stuff] you whole life,” Layla Dobson, a 12th grader at Sacramento Charter High School explained on Monday. “It gets depressing and eventually you become numb from it all because racism against Black people, subtle or overt, is an everyday occurrence.”

The empathy gap between races, socio-economic statuses, and religion has always been present, but some believe that, with the current presidential administration, such blatant examples of lack of empathy will only become more common.

“Racism is everywhere. It’s not going to change,” said Jacqui Guzman after reading the article. “The president talks so bad about my race, at this point, nothing that has to do with racism [surprises] me.”

According to a national survey from the Public Religion Research Institute referenced in the Washington Post, Republicans show very limited awareness to discrimination in minority groups. “Less than one-third of Republicans believe [B]lacks face a lot of discrimination in society, compared to roughly two-thirds who say they do not.”

And one can only imagine how oblivious, or blissfully optimistic, the 24 percent who believe that “not any groups (including minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ, etc.) experience a lot of discrimination” must be.

But studies have hypothesized that a person’s failure to empathize with other groups and, or in this case, races, can come from their own implicit bias of that race.

An article in Slate references a study that shows that people, including those in the medical field, assume Blacks feel less pain that other races.

This, obviously, is untrue. Blacks experience the same amount of physical pain as as everyone else. But when participants in the study were asked to rank the pain tolerance of photos of Blacks and White in different scenarios, most ranked that the Blacks were able to endure more pain than others.

This belief correlates with a very common misconception that Blacks and Hispanics are “harder” than other races because of their backgrounds and need stronger discipline than other races. This convoluted way of thinking really sheds light on how racial stereotypes and disparities are created.

Now that the problem has been identified, the next is to figure out what to do about it.

An article in Education Week says that early childhood, specifically through education, is where most people first begin to learn to empathize. Through relationships with their peers and teachers, children learn who they can trust and who and what to value.

The article says it’s up to instructors, and parents, to create a learning condition that teaches students to foster and support empathy of each others.

So while it may be too late for the current generation to learn empathy, it’s not too late for the next one.

Racism is an issue that America has been struggling with for over a century and has recently captured the attention of the people. Last month, members of the Sacramento Building Healthy Communities movement, funded by the California Endowment, met with Julie Nelson, Director of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity to help combat racial inequity.

The Government Alliance on Race and Equity is a national government network that works with local organizations to obtain racial equity and provide equal opportunities for all.

The California Endowment includes many different organizations that work hand in hand with the community. The GARE likes to target these organizations because they are the ones that offer services to the community and those services should not be affected because of a person’s race.

“Government has rule and responsibility to act in racial equity,” says Nelson.

GARE notices that companies can be bias towards certain people by the way they conduct their work. One way that the GARE advises to help stop racial inequity is by implementing racial equity tools in company decisions. A racial equity tool is a measure organizations take to proactively eliminate inequity before making policy and program decisions.

The presentation that GARE gave to members of the Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities program in Sacramento focuses on a three step process to create equal opportunities called A-C-T. A-C-T stands for “Affirm”, which means to state a problem or a goal the company faces, “Counter”, which means to face race directly and explain why there is a problem, and “Transform”, which means to change these policies.

“From The Community to the Classroom” is a movement, created in response to the 2003 hate crimes along with educational inequities occurring in the Davis, California school System. A documentary was created to tell the story of how together youth and adults helped their community overcome its 21st century racism.

“Many good folks, including President Obama, have labeled education as the civil rights issue of our time,” says Jann Murray-García, M.D., and M.P.H. Assistant Professor at the University of Davis’ Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. Youth In Focus is a Central Valley based nonprofit with the mission to “educate under-represented youth and their adult allies in youth-led action research”.

Youth In Focus recruited during the research phase of this movement to assist in training student in non-violent social change strategies and action research. “Educational inequity by race and class are morally and economically expensive, and for me as a pediatrician, ultimately impact the life outcomes of our children and communities,” said Murray.

In commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday a free public screening of “From the Community to the Classroom” will be on Tuesday, January 15, 2013 from 6-8:30pm. The screening will take place at the Guild Theater, 2828 35th Street, historic Oak Park, Sacramento, CA. Please be sure to RSVP by January 10, 2013 via email fayek@springmail.com

For more information about From the Community to the Classroom’s movement, research, or film please check out the link below.